History Archives - Bangladesh Circle

Honorary Citizens of Bangladesh

August 24, 2024September 18, 2016 by bidici

Correction: Father Marino Rigon – a missionary priest from Italy, was given honorary citizenship in Bangladesh in 2009. That makes the total number of citizens four, not three.

There are only three honorary citizens of Bangladesh: one from the USA, one from India, and one from New Zealand. One is a world-famous sports icon of the century, one is a world-renowned economist, and one is a doctor of the poor – almost unknown. Bangladesh has given these three people honorary citizenship out of admiration. A country bestows honorary citizenship to a foreign individual it considers incredibly admirable or worthy of the distinction. Honorary citizenship is such an extraordinary accolade that any country gives it rarely. The USA has granted such honor only to eight foreign nationals. Canada has six honorary citizens.

Honorary citizens of Bangladesh are also rare. So far, only three foreigners – Heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali, Nobel laureate economist Dr. Amartya Sen, and Dr. Edric Baker, a doctor for poor people in Bangladesh – were honored.

Muhammad Ali

It is unclear who took the initiative to invite Muhammad Ali to Bangladesh. However, UK-based filmmaker Reginald Massey, a Bangladeshi businessman named Ghiasuddin Chowdhury, thought it would be a great idea to make a film on Bangladesh, a new country then. He needed some introduction on the world stage. They decided that the best person to project Bangladesh would be the Black Muslim boxer Muhammad Ali (‘The Greatest’), who was universally loved and respected.

Muhammad Ali was scheduled to travel to Bangladesh after Ali’s fight with Leon Spinks. Unfortunately, Ali lost his heavyweight boxing title to Leon Spinks. It’s not a happy time for the champ. Ali was unsure how his fans in Bangladesh would receive him after his defeat, but he was quickly assured that does not matter. The people of Bangladesh love him no matter what! So, the world’s most famous boxing champion, Muhammad Ali, went to Bangladesh in February of 1978.

Ali’s visit lasted for five days. Ali traveled to the Sundarbans, Sylhet Tea Gardens, Rangamati, and Cox’s Bazaar. In Dhaka, Ali participated in a pre-arranged boxing match at Dhaka Stadium, where he lost a twelve-year-old Bangladeshi rival through an incredible knockout!

While in Dhaka, Ali was given a Bangladesh passport and made Honorary Citizens of Bangladesh by the then president of the country, Ziaur Rahman. “If I get kicked out of America, I have another home,” Ali quipped after receiving the passport.

Amartya Sen

Amartya Sen was born in the Manikganj area of Bangladesh (then in British India) in 1933. His family moved to India in 1945. Dr. Amartya Sen received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998. On the way back to India after winning the Nobel Prize, he stopped over in Bangladesh to visit his birthplace and childhood school.

During his three-day stay in Bangladesh, Dr. Sen visited St. Gregory’s High School, where he spent a few years, where the old boys gathered to see the most famous alumni. Sen was accorded a civic reception at the Balda Garden in downtown Dhaka, where Rabindranath Tagore was similarly honored after he won the Nobel. Dr. Sen delivered a keynote speech at an international conference, a public lecture open to guests, and visited Muktijoddah Jadughar (Liberation War Museum), and his childhood home in Wari.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina handed the certificate of honorary citizenship to the world-renowned economist at a simple ceremony at Ganabhaban. She also gave a Bangladesh passport to the visiting Bengali scholar, Amartya Sen, saying: “You are ours.” While receiving the citizenship and passport, the Nobel Prize winner said: “I am overwhelmed by the honor. I am happy to return to Bangladesh.”

The honor was a symbolic gesture, which could have a practical value by increasing his desire to visit Bangladesh more often.

Edric Baker

Dr. Edric Baker never visited Bangladesh just for a visit; he stayed there for 32 years and died there. A medical doctor from New Zealand heard the name of Bangladesh while working in Vietnam in the 1970s. He came to Bangladesh in 1983 and loved the country. He worked tirelessly and served the poor of Bangladesh until he died in 2015. He started the Kailakuri Healthcare Project (KHP) – near Modhupur, about 130 km from the capital, Dhaka, to give medical help to the poor and disadvantaged people of the area. KHP has been treating around 30,000 to 40,000 patients annually, almost free of cost (taka 10/13 US cents for a new patient, 5 taka/6 US cents for an old patient).

Due to the lack of participation of Bangladeshi doctors, Dr. Baker (also affectionately known as ‘Daktar Bhai’ or Doctor Brother) trained local people as paramedics and gave them the responsibility of healing them. He walked and rode bicycles to patients’ families’ homes to check their health. To communicate with the patients, he learned to speak Bangla fluently. Dr. Edric Baker lived a thousand miles away from home, far from his family, remained unmarried, lived in a mud hut, and wore ordinary lungis that poor people usually do in the villages to treat the poor people of Bangladesh.

He went to New Zealand once every one or two years for his visa extension and collected money for the center. Through private donations, almost all the funds to run KHP were collected from his friends, supporters, and well-wishers in New Zealand, Europe, and the United States. ‘Doctor for the Poor’ once said in an interview that our program runs on private donations from individuals who have heard about the project, visited the project, and shared the news. Almost all our funding comes from outside Bangladesh. I would like to see these things change. If this project does not become almost entirely Bangladeshi in terms of funding and terms of medical supervision, then I would consider that my life has been wasted … we need to work out some way of finding Bangladeshi doctors, or they should see us.

Hanif Sanket, a popular TV presenter in Bangladesh, produced a TV segment in 2011 on Dr. Baker’s work, which raised his profile and led the Bangladeshi government to grant him honorary Bangladeshi citizenship. There is no other information available about his citizenship issue! Just one or two lines!

Out of the three honorary citizens of Bangladesh, two have already passed away. Muhammad Ali died in 2016 at the age of 74 in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Dr. Edric Baker died in 2015 at 75 in Bangladesh. He was laid at rest in Bangladesh, according to his final request. The last of Bangladesh’s honorary citizens, Dr. Sen, is 82 years old and lives in the USA. The honorary citizenship process in Bangladesh is not transparent and not well-documented. If documented, then it is not available to the public! Trying to find out information about how the process works is challenging. Giving citizenship is a political process that sometimes needs to bend the law. According to one source, the legislation was changed to make Dr. Baker a Bangladeshi citizen! It might be interesting to know the actual process of granting Bangladesh’s honorary citizenship to a foreign national is.

Marino Rigon

A fourth person, Father Marino Rigon of Italy, was also granted honorary citizenship in 2009 for his contribution to the Bangladesh Liberation War. Father Rigon came to Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) in 1953 as part of missionary work. He worked for over 40 years helping war refugees and freedom fighters in 1971 in Baniarchar Catholic Church’s parish, Gopalgonj. He provided food and shelter to refugees and offered treatment to injured freedom fighters even when his life was under threat. He also played a key role in poverty alleviation, spreading education medical service, and helping poor women. Father Marino Rigon was a fluent Bangla speaker and translated a few Bangla books into Italian. Father Marino Rigon died in 2017 in Italy.

Shapes of Enclaves near Bangladesh-India Border

Maps of Bangladesh you may never seen or how to draw map the British way!

August 25, 2024April 20, 2015 by bidici

To draw a map of Bangladesh is not easy. It is nearly impossible for anyone to draw an accurate and complete map of Bangladesh if all the enclaves are included in the account. No geography books in Bangladeshi schools have them drawn! These enclaves are also unseen, forgotten, and neglected because they are difficult to visit, communication is controlled, daily life activities are limited, and developments are unworkable.

What is an enclave? Enclaves (Chitmahal in Bangla) are defined as a fragment of one country surrounded by another. They are not uncommon – many enclaves in many parts of the world were created due to historical, political, or geographical reasons. However, Bangladesh-India enclaves represent 80% of the total number of enclaves in the world since the 1950s.

A British Lawyer, Cyril Radcliffe, was given 37 days to draw a border between so-called ‘Hindu’ India and ‘Muslim’ Pakistan in 1947. And he did it – without visiting the area, without knowledge of culture, in complete secrecy, and destroyed all his papers before he left India. The border affected people, culture, geography, history, and politics. The last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, thought a hundred thousand deaths as “an acceptable level of violence” – indeed, millions died.

The number of existing enclaves in Bangladesh and India varies from source to source. The partition of the Indian subcontinent left 111 Indian enclaves inside Bangladesh and 51 Bangladeshi enclaves inside Indian territory, according to one source. Other estimates count 130 Indian Chitmahals in Bangladesh and 95 Bangladesh Chitmahals in Indian territory or 102 Indian exclaves inside Bangladesh and 71 Bangladeshi ones inside India. [Source] Whatever the accurate number of enclaves, the combined population in these areas is between 50,000 to 100,000.

All these enclaves are different in shape, size, and characteristics. In fact, Indo-Bangladesh enclaves are perhaps the most interesting, enigmatic, strange, complicated, and ‘Swiss cheese’ kind of map that exists today. Some enclaves are inside another enclave! Dahala Khagrabari is the world’s only third-order enclave, being Indian territory inside a Bangladeshi territory inside an exclave of India in Bangladesh. Suppose a resident of Dahala Khagrabari, India, wishes to reach Delhi. In that case, he/she must cross four international borders: first over into Bangladesh, then into India, back into Bangladesh again, and then, finally, into India.

Enough introduction. Let’s look into some of the enclaves via Google Maps! Some enclave maps have direct links for further exploration.

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A Woman’s War: Bangladesh

November 17, 2014April 7, 2014 by bidici

Elizabeth D. Herman is a New York based freelance photographer and researcher. Since 2010, she has been working on a photography and oral history project called, ‘A Woman’s War‘ – which documents the lives of women engaged in recent conflicts worldwide, as well as their struggle for justice, rights, and their identity as female fighters. As part of the project, she has travelled five countries and documented stories of 116 women in Egypt, Vietnam, Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Bangladesh. The project is a valuable contribution from historical point of view as well as women’s study.

Elizabeth worked in Bangladesh as a Fulbright Fellow to research on how politics influence the writing of national histories in textbooks. While there, she also kept working on ‘A Woman’s War’. She explored the experiences of Bangladeshi female combatants both during and after war of 1971.

Women’s role and suffering in the Liberation War of Bangladesh is still largely unknown. The women who were raped during the war of 1971 was given the title ‘Birangona’ (heroine) by the then government. Some benefits were given to them, but they were meager and mostly indirect – like, money and land rewards were offered to men who married the women. But in a country where rape is a serious stigma and consider women’s fault, the title ‘Birangona’ turned into a title of shame! Even though thousands of women were raped, tortured, handicapped, and suffered mental and physical abuse by the Pakistani Army, they failed to tell their stories because of social embarrassment. On the other hand, many women actively participated in the war. Some worked as spies, some risked their lives to help and train ‘mukti-joddhas’ (freedom fighters). They want to tell the stories of their struggle honorably. Elizabeth Herman provided some of them that opportunity. Here are six Bangladeshi women’s story:

I have lived with these wounds in both of my legs for my whole life. I got them while fighting with Sector 9 in the Liberation War. But the government does not pay me the Freedom Fighter stipend they pay the men. I get no help from the government. Now, my family has nothing.

Kabon Bibi, Dhaka

I do not know why some are called mukti juddha but we are called birangona…I used to care for and serve food to other freedom fighters when they would come to our house. Why are we not freedom fighters, too?

Hasina Begum, Sirajganj

I sang for the soldiers. Before they would take the field for battle, me and the others girls would gather together and sing to them songs of freedom. Then they would go and fight for our liberation.

Dalia Nausheen, Dhaka

During the war, I used to hide weapons underneath my sari and bring them to the Freedom Fighters. I would sometimes have to bury them in the middle of the night to hide them from the West Pakistani army.

Begum Gulferdous, Comilla

Both of my sons and my husband went off to fight during the war. One of my sons never came back. But I am proud. I am proud to be a war mother and a war wife.

Ameya Khatun, Bogra

As a woman Freedom Fighter I feel proud, all women cannot do what I did; I was not just a housewife or passing my time in India as a refugee. I was fighting for my country.

Rounak Mohal Dilruba Begum, Bogra

Elizabeth D. Herman is currently working in the US on American female veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Her work has been exhibited in a number of group shows at Tufts, as well as at a solo show at Shadhona Studios in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, NPR’s All Things Considered, GlobalPost, The Daily Beast/Newsweek, The Independent (Bangladesh), Warscapes, and FotoVisura.

Pictures copyrighted by Elizabeth D. Herman

William Ouderland – A ‘Bir Protik’ From A Distant Land

September 11, 2016March 10, 2014 by bidici

William A.S. Ouderland (1917-2001) was a Dutch-Australian commando officer who actively took part in the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. He was awarded the fourth highest gallantry award, the Bir Protik, by the government of Bangladesh. He is the only foreigner to receive this honorary award.

I was wondering about him for a while…found some information on the internet. Below are my finding. It is not all and enough. Hope someone, someday may be more interested in his life and find more information about him!

In 1936, William Ouderland he was conscripted for National Service shortly after he had started working with the Bata Shoe Company in Netherlands. On the eve of Nazi invasion in 1940, he was called up to serve as a sergeant in the Dutch Royal Signals Corp. During the war, he was taken prisoner by the Nazis, but soon escaped from the POW camp and joined the Dutch underground resistance movement. He spoke fluent German and several Dutch dialects, which helped him to befriend the German high command and was thus able to help the Dutch underground movement as well as the allied forces with the vital information.

After the war, he returned to work for Bata. On the eve of Liberation War of Bangladesh, he came to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) as the General Manager/Production Manager/CEO of Bata Shoe Company. (seems like no one is sure about his exact title)

Repression, occupation and brutality of Pakistan Army on unarmed Bengali people reminded him of Nazi occupation in Europe. He wrote in a letter – ‘I was reliving my experience of my younger days in Europe.’ He felt that the world should be aware of the extent of genocide. As a foreigner and top executive of a multinational company, he used his position to take pictures of atrocities committed by Pakistani regime and passed them to the world press.

He also used his close relationship with higher echelon of the occupation forces including general Tikka Khan and General Niazi, to avail sensitive information and passed them to the Mukti Bahini (Liberation Force).

William A.S. Ouderland, Ouderland and General Osmani — William Ouderland, Ouderland and General Osmani

He secretly trained and assisted local youths in guerrilla resistance tactic around Tongi. After sending his own family back home (Netherlands?), he made his residence a safe place for freedom fighters (whom he considered as his sons) and gave them food, medicine, shelter and advice – trained the guerrilla in the premises of the Bata shoe factory. He also planned and directed a number of guerilla operations.

Ouderland remained in Bangladesh until 1978. Then he was transferred to Australia to work and eventually settled there. This uncommon, unsung, less known hero of a nation died in Perth, Western Australia on 18 May 2001. He was 84.

In 2010, a road in Gulshan, Dhaka was named after him – ‘Ouderland, Bir Pratik Road’, a Bangla biography was published in 2010. In 2011, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh visited his cemetery and paid homage while she was on a visit to Australia.

I wish I could know more about W.A.S.O. Why did he risk his life AGAIN when he certainly knew that it was extremely dangerous to do so? Who wants to go in front of death – twice! When most of the foreigners left a country what was ravaged by one of the most brutal genocide in human history, why did he remained there and risked his life? What was his reaction after receiving the award of Bir Protik? What his family and friends think of him? What kind of person was he?

He took pictures during the war. I wish some day soon I will be able to see all the photos he took.

History makes us and moves us all – he may not be a hero to others, but for Bangladeshi people he is – at least, he should be.